Looking at Patterns and Motifs: Rosa Vives Piqué

RIHA Journal 0129 | 25 September 2015
Looking at patterns and motifs

Rosa Vives Piqué
Universitat de Barcelona
Editing and peer review managed by:

Joana Cunha Leal, Instituto de História da Arte, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Reviewers:
António Canau, Alexandra Curvelo
Abstract
I take as my point of departure the various meanings of the Spanish word trama,
observing and ordering these as they relate to different aspects of the art of printmaking.
The phenomenon of trama is appreciable in the conception and activity of printmaking
and also in the materials this art employs, which in turn leave their mark upon the visible
and the tactile. Trama is also important in the graphic narrative and in iconography, and
this article contributes to the literature with two, hitherto unpublished examples. The first
example is a multifaceted icon which was created in the context of popular European
printmaking but which came to exert an influence on fine art printmaking even in
Picasso. The second example is a drawing which I have been able to attribute to Marià
Fortuny, the most internationally renowned Catalan painter of the nineteenth century,
and which I examine in the light of an association that may be made between the
drawing and a print by Rembrandt.
Contents
Introduction
Graphic patterns
Surface textures
From pattern to pixel
Migration and merging of graphic patterns
Narrative threads
Iconographic motifs
The trama of the Gat qui menja lo rat. From Gesner to Picasso
The trama of the Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt by Marià Fortuny
Conclusion
Introduction
[1] In Latin languages the word trama appeared for the first time in the year 1400,
from the Latin trama, the weft to form cloth. It is defined as the thread or group of
threads which run the width of the cloth, interlaced with the lengthwise yarns that form
the warp. Etymologically it has the meaning "across", in Spanish a través, from the Latin
trans which in turn derives from the Sanskrit tar. In the jargon of textile making, the
threads of the weft and the warp are differentiated, the warp running the full length of
the material, parallel to the edges. Weavers draw the weft yarns transversally through
the previously laid out lines of the warp.
[2] Trama is also the word used for things which have a structure similar to that of
threads of fabric: the distribution or links between the different parts of something, a
group of interlaced filaments, the support structure of living tissue. The word is
commonly used in architectural jargon and in urban planning, and one needs to look no
further than the block pattern of Cerdà's plan for the Eixample district in Barcelona.
License: The text of this article is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0.
Figuratively, as a metaphor of fabric, trama refers to a plot or intrigue, as in the

expression se trama una conspiración – "a conspiracy is being woven". In the vocabulary
of photo-mechanical reproduction, the word refers to the transparent screen with a very
fine square grid, which is placed between the photosensitive plate and the
photoengraving surface to obtain half-tones by separating the resulting image into dots
of light. In present-day communication and computing technology, it refers to what in
certain communication protocols is called a 'packet', the unit for sending data over a
network, composed of a packet header, the actual data and the packet trailer – final de
trama in Spanish. Particularly within the art of engraving, there is a wide range of
meanings of the word trama, which not only appear frequently but also determine its
specific language. Within both the process and the objective it can differentiate four
groups of meanings: graphic, textural, narrative and iconographic. The latter two aspects
will be developed below through specific study cases related to popular Catalan prints
and etchings by two of the most eminent Catalan and Spanish artists of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, Marià Fortuny (Reus 1838-1874) and Pablo Picasso (Malaga
1881-Mougins 1973).1
Graphic patterns
[3] In all cases, the word trama suggests regularity and continuity. This continuity is
always maintained in the whole, even when there are interruptions or physical breaks in
an area. The trama may be ripped in the same way as a thread may be cut. Using thread
as a metaphor, it can establish a 'fabric' based on lines. In engravings on metal plates,
the layout of the dots forms a pattern within a pattern. A visual one, to create the image,
and a physical one for the print, together they determine the actual perception of the
print and what it represents. Even when there is an inferred outline, when there is an
organised shape, the new pattern superimposes its prevalent order to complement the
composition and is the organisational structure. But patterns which are free or broken,
obtained by creative etching or abstract processes, also always form the necessary tissue
for printmaking.
[4] In the most basic pattern for line drawing in traditional engraving, especially
copperplate engraving, the single stroke, the line resulting from a succession of dots, is
the element that triggers subdivisions. The mental object – the line – and the physical
object – the stroke – partition the blank paper and introduce shading to create half-
tones, values and volumes through incisions: inferred, ordered, full-length or in sections,
grouped, regular, thick, thin, resembling mycelium filaments or simply dots and lines.
1
In relation to these aspects, it is worth mentioning in particular the contribution of Rosalind E.
Krauss (The Optical Unconscious, Cambridge, Mass. 1993), who took Walter Benjamin's idea on
optical intuition and developed it transversely through networks of modern art. A similar
contribution, though with a more phenomenological approach, is that of Jean-François Chevrier in
La trame et le hazard, Paris 2010.
[5] When the art of engraving was at its moment of maximum splendour, it brought
about the normalisation and classification of graphic patterns in a standardised theory of
'strokes'.2 When, in a black-and-white print, the appearance of one signifies the absence
of the other, the pattern configures the whole gradient of visible and inseparable values
simultaneously, light and dark. When the black is sunk into the engraved lines and is
minimised, the white stands out and expands, and they become totally dependent on
each other for their existence. The trama also structures the perceptive quality of the
light resulting from the vibration of black and white, a rhythmic alternation, of presence
and absence of light, of directional and expansive dynamic structure as in musical
cadencies.
[6] It should also be noted, as Ingold points out in his recently published The Life of
Lines, that when executing a pattern, the engraver's hand makes the same movement
through the air, but in the opposite direction, as the burin on the copper. It is a physical
movement that creates a double pattern, one as a gesture in space, the other becoming
permanent and leaving the mark made by the tool.3 In contrast to the trace of a single
line, the movement alludes to the idea of violence. As lines cross, the first ones are
attacked by subsequent lines running over them, in the same way as a pattern tends to
invade the area around it as it extends. With regard to the image of Rafael's Poetry,
Hubert Damisch noted "L'opposition, le contraste entre deux régimes du trait en se
réduisant pas à un simple trait stylistique; dans l'intervalle entre la planéarité du
dispositif des hachures et la linéarité perdue du contour, la violence incisive se fait jour
qui est celle non plus du stylet, mais du trait de plume".4 It is obvious that this aspect is
more strongly emphasized with the effects of the burin and the drypoint needle on the
paper.
[7] Since the first, most paradigmatic theoretical work of Abraham Bosse, Traicté des
manières de graver en taille-douce sur l'airain (Paris, 1645) (Fig. 1) and its later
additions and translations into different languages, the pattern has been a well-studied
topic for teaching the use of engraver's burins, needles and etching tools, to obtain
various effects. In contrast, studies of its rhetoric aspects are limited to passing
references in texts on perception, most of which are based on the book by William Ivins
Jr., Prints and Visual Communication. Written in the 1950s, it was published in Spanish in
Barcelona, as Imagen impresa y conocimiento, over twenty years later (1975), by
Gustavo Gili, with a prologue by Daniel Giralt-Miracle, an expert in graphic arts. This is an
instructive text which today, at the beginning of the 21st century, is still relevant, with no
other publication improving on its study of the meanings of traditional graphic patterns.
2
Javier Blas (dir.), Ascensión Ciruelos, Clemente Barrena, Diccionario del dibujo y de la estampa.
Vocabulario y tesauro sobre las artes del dibujo, grabado, litografía y serigrafía, Madrid 1996, 81.
3
Tim Ingold, Líneas. Una breve historia, Barcelona 2015, 188.
4
Hubert Damisch, Traité du trait. Tractatus tractus, Paris 1995, 73.
1 Abraham Bosse, Traicté des manières de graver en taille-

douce..., fig. 5 (rep. from Gutenberg Reprint, Paris 1979)
[8] Ivins defined the graphic pattern as syntaxes, the standardisation of the line work
similar to the rational network of geometry, a special system of linear structures.
Beginning with the Renaissance, he describes it in the fine lines used by gold and
silversmiths and in the wider lines produced by sketch artists and painters. He continues
with the previously mentioned book by Abraham Bosse and the technique of Claude
Mellan, based on using parallel and spiralling lines – the 'warp' – sometimes without any
transversal lines, which puts him at the zenith of the profession.5 However, this also
meant the onset of the decline of the burin, which finally came about at the end of the
nineteenth century with the arrival of photography, reducing its use almost exclusively to
engravings for stamps and bank notes. But, above all, Ivins emphasises the influence of
the graphic pattern in the understanding, history and visual knowledge of the works of
the collective imaginary before photography.6
Surface textures
[9] But what is usually forgotten, what I find no reference to, is the strands of thick
ink from the copper plate physically transferred onto another type of trama, a material
trama, the fibre of paper, and, of course, the luxurious silk in special prints. Just looking
at a sheet of laid paper against the light is enough to grasp the intricate texture of
5
Maxime Préaud, L'oeil d'or. Claude Mellan, 1598-1688, Paris 1988.
6
This is a very important aspect in shaping the look not only of a work of art but of perception in
general. Ivins' text dates from the first half of the twentieth century. Obviously the construction of
the modern view has evolved meteorically, and this evolution is treated by Jonathan Crary in his
paradigmatic book, The techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth
Century (Cambridge, Mass. 1990) which reconstructs and reconsiders the social and historical
backgrounds and, very importantly, technical, modern perception and visual culture.
differently-spaced vertical 'wire-marks' and horizontal chain-lines'. Obviously, it is the

weft and warp of the wire mesh which determine the form of this sheet of paper, while in
more modern wove paper it is the random arrangement of compressed fibres. In
addition, the finishing on the sheet of paper has other surface textures, to give a tactile
or optical effect and which can influence the printmaking results: grooves, granules,
colour hues, satin finish, gloss, transparent and opaque effects, etc. The paper is not
merely a support, but merges with the printed image and becomes the light of the print.
[10] This double texture, that of the paper and the strongly pronounced relief of the
ink, both physically present, is eminently tactile. Running a hand over the print, with our
eyes closed, we navigate over the black relief of straight lines, curves, squares,
rhomboids, etc. We travel along flat, satin or cotton spaces, and moving out of the
printed area, we can appraise the softness, the roughness, and the resistance of the
paper, through a wide range of varying sensory perceptions.
From pattern to pixel

[11] However, the trama has progressed from this physical presence, on both copper
and paper, to virtual reality, along a route from the ordered dot, engraved on metal by
hand, to the mechanically treated film of photoengraving. Along with the massive
expansion of the image, patterns have continually evolved and been perfected. Thanks to
the invention of photomechanical processes in the US and Europe around the 1880s, the
move was made from engraving to photoengraving. In the new technique, the image is
modified using patterns of large numbers of dots which make it possible to reproduce
half-tones together with text in high-speed printing processes. A whole range of
techniques emerged progressively to enable refining of the patterns and to improve
printing. This continued in techniques dedicated primarily to reproductions and the
graphics industry, and eventually led to the lines on the television screen or the present-
day pixels of the digital image. When printed on paper, the image must be converted into
minute dots of black ink. Printing of the image now involves lines so fine that sometimes
they are not noticeable. Since the invention of the laser in 1960, the 'picture element',
has meant images are reduced to several million pixels per square inch, have only optical
and no tactile textures, are suitable for flat reproductions, and can be stored in 'the
cloud', having no physical existence.
[12] Without doubt, the pixel will make further progress, but I'm certain that it will
never substitute the incision. The hand-drawn pattern of the artist will continue to leave
its mark, an anachronistic mark, an empreinte, resulting from the interaction of
philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology and archaeology because, in the end, it has been an
innate action of man from the beginning of time.7 It has been so ever since our ancestors
7
Before continuing, it is pertinent here to direct the reader to the investigative work of Georges
Didi-Huberman on the empreinte, in his La Ressemblance par contact: Archéologie, Anachronisme
et Modernité de l'empreinte, Paris 2008 (re-published from the prologue of the catalogue for the
carved primitive signs in rock, long before Pliny the Elder claimed that the capturing of an
image by light in Corinth was the origin of the art of painting. Similarly, it seemed that
photography would cause the downfall of printmaking, but in reality, it has only affected
the reproduction of the engraving.
Migration and merging of graphic patterns

[13] As previously mentioned, the word trama also refers to the graphic methods of
photomechanical printing. The regular patterns of dots, the Ben-Day dots, which are
particularly visible in the less-carefully made popular publications, and which are very
obvious when the blocks of colour are positioned incorrectly, are dots which have
fascinated many readers and also some artists. One of these is Roy Lichtenstein, who,
from the 1960s, transformed them into a pop icon, an element which identified his style,
into a pattern for his compositions – painting, graphic work and even sculpture, of which
an example can be found in Barcelona. I refer to Barcelona Head (1992) on Passeig de
Colom, which, on the surface (Fig. 2), reproduces the bright, magnificent red dots,
resembling the local trencadís, the Gaudí style of broken ceramics.8
2 Roy Lichtenstein, Barcelona Head, 1991-92, street sculpture in

Passeig de Colom, Barcelona (photograph provided by the author)
[14] The way this is done shows clearly how a functional element, eminently graphic,
becomes the main feature in plastic compositions, interacting with the graphics within the
graphics. Later on, Sigmar Polke worked with the same idea and, inspired by Roy
Empreinte, exhibition in the Musée Georges Pompidou in Paris, 1997).

8
Mary L. Corlett, The prints of Roy Lichtenstein. A catalogue Raisonne 1948-1997, Easthampton,
Mass. 2002. For information on this type of Catalan ceramics, consult Marta Saliné and Roser
Vilardell, Tradición y modernidad. La cerámica en el modernismo, Barcelona 2006.
Lichtenstein,9 used these symbols in a free interpretation of reproduction of the

reproduction. More recently, these dots, laid out regularly within a network, or appearing
alone and isolated, prevail in the work of artists such as Yayoi Kusama, who has based
her plastic art and life experience on this basic element,10 and Damien Hirst, who seems
to be competing with the Japanese artist in the use of this icon.11 While these examples
refer to the photomechanical trama, something similar is found in the exploration and
transposition of the manual trama in the work of Jasper Johns. Hachure, in French,
hatching and crosshatching, in English, refers to clusters of two, three or more, straight
parallel lines, repeated to form directional groups, to define a space or to give shading to
figures and objects. Jasper Johns transformed this into a pattern in his paintings and
graphic works.12 The artist was concerned with the connection between the fragment and
the whole, particularly in engravings. Around the 1970s, a central theme arose in his
paintings, which is also occasionally reflected in his engravings. In paintings such as
Scent, Corpse and Mirror and Untitled (1975), Johns only used crosshatching, using
parallel brushstrokes of the same colour. He did this for the first time in the leftmost
panel in his Untitled (1972) series. What we see, when looking superficially, could be
considered coherent structures which cover and unify the surface in a balanced way, but,
if we look more closely, it reveals itself as an organism on which various zones act
together and in many different ways. The painting is divided into many sectors in which
the crosshatched structures and the different levels of register act equally. The shade
made with the lines is broken at the edge of the section or it continues in the same
direction, unstoppable, so that an occasional change of colour can still occur. This system
of lines, therefore, is conditioned to be called 'abstract'. 13 Pattern and colour, being
different perceptive parameters, constitute two forms of chromatism, both contradictory
and complementary. Johns used this repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s: the purely
graphic element, the hatching, giving shape to his paintings, lithographs and silk screen
prints. You could see this link between printmaking and painting in Barcelona in 1980, in
the Jasper Johns: Working Proofs exhibition, one of the most innovative on print
presented in Barcelona in the twentieth century. It introduced new concepts in modern
graphics, with Work in Progress and Exhibition Proofs, for example, demonstrating the
process as an integral part of the exhibition.
9
Kathy Halbreich, Mark Godfrey, Lanka Tattersell and Magnus Schaefer, Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-
2010, New York 2014.
10
Yayoi Kusaman, Infinity Net: the Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2013; Jo Applin et al.,
Yayoi Kusama, Madrid 2011.
11
Robert Pincus-Witten et al., The Complete Spot paintings, 1986-2011, London 2011.
12
Christian Geelhaar, Jasper Johns: proves de treball, exh. cat., Barcelona 1980.
13
Geelhaar, Jasper Johns, 25.
Narrative threads
[15] Another meaning of the word trama is the distribution of, or link between, parts of
something, of a theme, a story or a narration. Engravings have always tended to form
sequences of images, presented sets, in series, or illustrating texts. In short, with
multiple scripts, such as religious iconographies, the Italian vedute, Los Caprichos by
Goya and many others,14 with an extensive panorama of lofty examples which should
include a large number of moral, entertaining and popular scripts, such as playing cards,
the Aesop fables, genealogic trees and the traditional Catalan auques – stories told in
pictures.15
[16] But there are other tales on a single plate, from when engraving first began, when
the style of the Book of Hours, Gothic altar pieces, and the Rosary was transferred to
copper plate.16 It is worth mentioning, as an example, the first signed intaglio work in
Catalan printmaking history, Fifteen Mysteries and the Virgin of the Rosary made in 1488
by Francesc Domenec (Fig. 3).
3 Francesc Domenec, Fifteen Mysteries and the Virgin of the Rosary,

1488, engraving, 35 x 27 cm (author's collection)
[17] In the upper part of this copper plate is a rectangle, split in half, which has a
complete and ordered visual description of the life of Jesus Christ, through the fifteen
mysteries of rejoicing, pain and the blessings of the rosary. The bottom part is divided
into eight rectangles, with the Dominican saints on the left, Saint Dominic above and
14
Tomàs Harris, Goya Engravings and Lithographs, San Francisco 1983.
15
For information on popular Spanish prints consult: Agustí Duran Sanpere, Grabados populares
españoles, Barcelona 1971.
16
On the arrangement of space see the classic: A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints & People. A Social History of
Printed Pictures, New York 1972.
Saint Thomas Aquinas below. On the right are Saint Peter the Martyr and Saint Catherine
of Siena. The figures in the centre are surrounded by a mandorla festooned with a rosary
of roses, held by the Virgin. Above are Saint Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of the
convent, on the left, and Saint Eulalia, patron saint of Barcelona. Below are Saint Vincent
Ferrer and the miracle of the horseman of Cologne.17
[18] Approximately one hundred years after the Fifteen Mysteries and the Virgin of the
Rosary, we have an example of a doubly-complex narrative thread, pioneering in
compositional structure. It is the book Evangelicae historiae imagines: ex ordine
Evangeliorum quae toto anno in Missae sacrificio recitandur, in ordinem temporis vitae
Christi digestae/auctore Hieronymo Natali Societatis Iesu... (Images of the evangelical
history recited throughout the year during the holy communion, ordered in line with the
life of Christ), which accompanies the Adnotationes et Meditationes in Evangelia quae in
Sacrosancto Missae Sacrificio toto anno leguntur, cum eorundem Evangeliorum
concordia. Autore Hieronymo Natali, Societatis Iesu Teologo. Editio prima (Antwerp,
1593). Shortening the title, it is known as the Biblia Natalis in reference to the name of
its promoter, P. Jeroni Nadal i Morey from Mallorca, student and successor of Ignatius of
Loyola, and its 153 engravings make it one of the most superb Flemish engravings of the
sixteenth century and of the Counter-Reformation.18 We can stay with the symbolic use of
the narrative cycles of the Holy Scriptures which, limiting ourselves to engraving, go back
to the Biblia Pauperum and the wood engravings of the 15th century, the Biblia Natalis,
thought up and used as an iconographic programme with a high pedagogic content. This
became a tool for Catholic propaganda, indoctrination of the masses, in line with the
ideas of the Council of Trento.19 It was a very important compendium of the dogma and
Catholic faith for teaching the catechism. It was also far ahead of its time since, after the
first copies were published – some printed on vellum and satin by Plantin and Nutius –
many issues were printed, as well as facsimile editions (Fig. 4)20 even until very recently
for use in catechism classes.
17
Guy C. Bauman, "A Rosary Picture with a View of the Park of the Ducal Palace in Brussels,
possibly by Goswijn van der Weyden," in: Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989), 135-151; and F.
Fontbona, "Virgen del Rosario 1488. Francesc Domenec," http://www.march.es/recursos-
web/prensa/estampas/abril2012.pdf (accessed 1 June 2014).
18
A. J. J. Delen, Histoire de la gravure dans les anciens Pays-Bas et dans les provinces belges des
origines jusqu'a la fin du XVIII, Paris 1924-1934.
19
See study by Nadal Cañellas in the reissue of the Biblia Natalis: Juan Nadal, ed., La Biblia Natalis,
Palma 2006.
20
Juan Nadal (ed.), La Biblia Natalis, Palma 2006, and Pinedo Iparraguirre SJ, intro., Biblia natalis.
La Biblia de Jerónimo Nadal, Bilbao 2008.
4 Biblia Natalis, 1593, fig. 107 (reproduced from reprint, Palma, 2006)
[19] The novelty of the narrative thread here is based on the fact that each print was a
subject of many possible interpretations.21 The objective was to recreate the scenes with
precise details, close to the historic, geographic and topographic reality in which the
event occurred, that is, to spell out the famous "composition of the place", to visualise a
reality while giving the scenes a pleasing attractiveness. 22 The result is a very high level
of artistic originality with the narrative resources standing out, such as the sequences of
different actions and time periods in a single composition, or an image within an image.
This formula was very successful later, for example, in the well known Meninas and in
Hilanderas by Velázquez.23 Within the Saint Ignatius tradition of Ars memoriae and in
Ramon Llull's Ars Magna, equally important for P. Nadal, there is also the highly effective
21
Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr., The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry, Ithaca/London 1993, and R. Vives,
"La llarga repercussió plàstica de les estampes de la Biblia Natalis," in: Serra d'Or 579 (2008), 28-
31.
22
A detailed and definitive study of the use of the image as a medium and a well thought-out
explanation to reach the divine truth is Pierre-Antoine Fabre's "Les Exercices spirituels sont-ils
illustrables?," in: Luce Giard and Louis de Vaucelles (eds.), Les jesuïtes à l'âge barroque. 1540-
1610, Grenoble 1996, 121-132. I also suggest referring to Marc Fumaroli, "Les jésuites et
l'apologètique des 'images saintes'," in: Alain Tapié (ed.), Baroque, vision jésuite. De Tintoret à
Rubens, exh. cat., Caen 203, 15-25.
Particularly in relation to "composition of place" see Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Ignace de Loyola,
Le lieu de l'image. Le problème de la composition de lieu dans les pratiques spirituelles et
artístiques jésuites dans la seconde moitié du XVI siècle, Paris 1992; and Lizzie Bouli, "La
'composition de lieu' dans le procédé du 'tableau dans le tableau'. Contemplation et experiènce de
la vision par la clôture," in: La imagen religiosa en la monarquía hispánica: usos y espacios.
Colección de la Casa de Velàzquez XIV, Madrid 2008, 298-316.
23
J. F. Moffitt, "Francisco Pacheco and Jerome Nadal; New Light on the Flemish. Sources of the
Spanish Picture-within-the-Picture," in: Art Bulletin 1990.
mnemonic technique of labelling the sequences or the characters with capital letters,
which, repeated at the foot of the image, identify or explain the subject represented.
According to Edgerton, the technique reveals a very innovative mind, even though it is
possible that P. Nadal copied the idea from Rhetorica christiana (Perusa, 1579) by Diego
Valadés, or from scientific publications, which were beginning to use it, such as Della
Trasportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano... by Domenico Fontana (Rome, 1590). This was
published three years before Biblia Natalis, and is a paradigm of the engineering
literature of the Renaissance.24 With large pages, this book has elegant typography, with
illustrated capitals, floral decoration and xylographic vignettes. It is illustrated with
beautiful etchings which show the obelisk as it was and as it was to be, giving a great
deal of visually emphatic information, which I can see as a precedent for the
representative concepts employed by Piranesi when he examined the constructions of
Ancient Rome. An imaginative focus, with diagrams, elevation of the section shown in
perspective and at a specific scale, aerial views and views of the machinery from different
angles. There are 39 etchings, all by Natale Bonifacio and dated 1589, as well as a
frontispiece with a burin engraving of the portrait of Fontana set in an etched frame. 25
Thirteen prints are dedicated to the erection of the obelisk and twenty-six, including
three double-page spreads, to the remaining Papal commissions, from f.37r. Together
they form a graphic narrative which combines historic documentation and compositional
beauty, including allegorical figures and ornamentation, with scientific precision, as it
represents the actual work as well as the calculations, with a great variety of plastic
solutions, and marked with letters which refer to the descriptions in the references on the
page preceding each print. It is a way to link images and text using engraved letters as a
reference mark, forming a dual language, artistic and written, in a single graphic field, a
style which was extensively used later, in very popular graphic forms, such as comics.
Iconographic motifs
[20] The fourth group of meanings of trama in engraving mentioned previously, is that
of iconographic motifs, which involves the importance of printing as a way of spreading
images, an aspect which has been studied in depth. Themes or motifs are passed from
one artist to another, from cultured to popular prints and the reverse, from one country
24
Domenico Fontana, Della Trasportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano et delle fabriche di Nostro Signore
Papa Sisto V, fatte dal caualier Domenico Fontana architetto di Sua Santita. Libro primo. In Roma:
appresso Domenico Basa, 1590 (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal), http://purl.pt/6256/1/P231.html
(accessed 26 June 2014).
See also, R. Mortimer, Italian 16th century Books. Harvard College Library. Department of
Printing and Graphic Arts. Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Pt, II, Vol I. Cambridge, Mass.
1974; S. Broorsch, "The building of the Vatican. The papacy and architecture," in: Bulletin,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982/83. vol. XL, 3, and J. Calavera Ruiz, prol., Del transporte del
obelisco Vaticano y de las obras de Nuestro Señor el Papa Sixto V [texto impreso] hecho por el
caballero Domenico Fontana, arquitecto de su Santidad, Madrid 1974.
25
For information on the etcher Natale Bonifacio see L. Donati, "Intorno all'opera di Natale
Bonifacio," in: Archivo Storico per la Dalmazia, XV-XVI (1933), 223-22, and M. Pelc, Natale
Bonifacio, Zagreb 1997.
or school to another, so in the end they become widespread. For this, the function of
'spreading the word' in the visual arts is especially fundamental in print.
[21] Without doubt, the greatest body of engraved iconographic motifs is that
generated by the work of Rafael and those who most closely interpreted his designs,
particularly Marcantonio Raimondi, as published in the magnificent Raphael Invenit
catalogue.26 Here it is made clear that "the image of an image is another image, and this
kind of binary excision is of particular importance in our world, where the majority of
images are reproductions of earlier images, each having its own existence and autonomy,
with the owners and authors claiming rights". 27 Vasari, in his early account of Raphael's
interest in etching and awareness of Dürer's illustrations, remarked that "when Raphael
saw Dürer's etchings and wanted to show what he was capable of in that area, he had
Marco Antonio Bolognese study the technique intensively. Bolognese became so
successful that Raphael had him print his first works: The Massacre of the Innocents, a
Last Supper, Neptune and The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia. Later on, Marco Antonio made a
number of prints for Raphael […]".28 And it could be said that, as a result of Raphael's
work, the use of etchings as reproductions or interpretations was established. These
etchings were drawings, painting or sculpture transferred to a black and white image on
paper following a process which very often involved several specialists: sketch artists;
etchers specialized in representing motifs such as faces, figures, garments, landscapes
and calligraphy; printers and editors. Together they formed workshops where their
activity was organised in a close network of complicity, with each member being essential
for the perfect execution of the work at hand. These workshops continued operating until
the emergence of photography in the nineteenth century, an emblematic example being
the international company Maison Goupil, which operated in Paris between 1827 and
1920. As art dealers in paintings and as editors, they promoted the works of their artists
in a thriving society which was the driving force behind a culture for the masses based on
the image. For the reproduction of images, they used various graphic techniques that
were popular at the time, ranging from original etchings by the artists themselves (this
was the case of Mariano Fortuny) to engravings made with the burin, engravings on steel
plates and lithography, as well as photomechanical processes such as heliography,
Woodburytype, etc., and even photography. In this way, the compositions and motifs in
painting were themselves repeated and coexisted in different techniques, some of which
26
Grazia Bernini, Stefania Massari, Simonetta Prosperi, Raphael Invenit. Stampe da Raffaello nelle
collezioni dell'Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome 1985.
27
Michel Melot, Breve historia de la imagen, Madrid 2010, 13.
28
Giorgio Vasari, Las vidas de los más excelentes arquitectos, pintores y escultores italianos desde
Cimabue a nuestro tiempo, (Anthology) Study, selection and Spanish translation by María Teresa
Méndez and Juan Mª Montijano, Madrid 2001, 353.
Sharon Gregory went more deeply into these aspects in "Vasari, Prints and Imitation," in:
Drawing, 1400-1600. Invention and Innovation, Stuart Currie (ed.), Ashgate 1998. Her most
recent publication is fundamental for etchings from the Italian renaissance: Vasari and the
Renaissance Prints, Ashgate 2012.
were about to lose their status, such as burin engraving, while others, such as
photography, were ready to take their place. An example of connivance of techniques in a
single image is the spectacular engraving by Louis Henriquel-Dupont (Paris 1797-1892),
representing the Hemycicle de Beax Arts (1853), an 1841 painting by Paul Delaroche.
Another wood engraving of this painting was made by A. Marc and published in
L'Illustration (1841) and an albumin print made by Jefferson Bingham in 1858.29
[22] But returning to the etching of the original creator, as said at the beginning of this
section, the circulation of themes between artists, whether near or far from each other,
follows the principles of connection and heterogeneity. And they can be connected, or
multiplied, like the "Deleuzian" rhizome, which is not a copy, nor a hierarchical
reproduction, and continually reappears in varying compositions which are far apart both
in time and in place. For this reason, and as examples, I present two iconographic motifs
which I have worked on in our most recent research.
The trama of the Gat qui menja lo rat. From Gesner to Picasso
[23] The first case centres around one of the best-known icons of popular Catalan
engraving, the woodcut Gat qui menja lo rat (c. 1675), by Pere Abadal,30 of which the
Biblioteca de Catalunya (Graphics Unit) has the wooden block and an original print
(Àlbum de Mostres Abadal, f. 158 / XXIII-2 B. R.E. 19505). It is an image that Catalan
culture has adopted as its own, even though it is known that it is not a genuine Catalan
invention. Following a pattern, it is really a direct copy of what has been found in other
European countries, from Italy and France to Russia, and is based either on the cat
drawn by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner31 in 1551 (Fig. 5), or on a later copy by
Topsell,32 drawn in 1658. The original cat, either that of Gesner or Topsell's copy, is
sitting, face forward, with an anthropomorphic expression. Its tail is wrapped round its
feet and the cat's fur is in regular horizontal bands, with a concentric marking on its left
haunch. However, there is no mouse in its mouth. It is not known where or when the
mouse in the Catalan version was first added. In fact, neither the Russian cat by Kazan
nor the Italian one by A. Morandi (c. 1590-1652), printed by the Remondini studio in the
eighteenth century, have it. The fact is that there are many variants which take on a
different significance in each country.
29
Stephen Bann (in Parallel lines. Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century
France, New Haven and London 2001), explored this engraving in depth, and the relation between
artists, etchers and photographers in nineteenth century Paris.
30
Immaculada Socías, Catàleg del fons Abadal de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona 2006, 39-
41. Also: Joan Amades, Xilografies gironines, Girona 1947, 43; Joan Amades, Costumari català. El
curs de l'any, Barcelona 1956, 290; Agustí Duran Sanpere, Grabados populares españoles,
Barcelona 1971, 41; Elena Páez, Repertorio de grabados españoles en la Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid 1981; Immaculada Socías, "The Workshop of Pere Abadal," in: Print Quarterly XXI (2004),
4.
31
Conrad Gesner, "Quadrupedibus vivaparis," in: Historiae Animalium I, Froschoverum 1551, 345.
32
Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, London 1658 (re-published in:
The English Experience 561, Amsterdam, New York 1973, 104).
5 Conrad Gesner, Quadrupedibus vivaparis..., 1551, 354, woodcut

(http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/gesner/gesner.html)
6 Sessa printers' mark, Divina Comedia, 2nd ed., 1578 (from

http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1578ses/1578_ses.c
ol.200dpi.jpeg)
[24] I have discovered the same icon, a male or female cat, depending on the expert,
with a mouse in its mouth, in the typographic mark of the Venetian printers, Sessa. Over
the years, the long line of the Sessa family used the same printers' mark of the cat, with
variations (Fig. 6).33 In 1539, the logo for Melchior Sessa was a cat walking with the
mouse. A seated cat, like the one under study, with the mouse in its mouth and the head
turned slightly to the right, was used in 1564, for the books of the brothers Giovanni
Battista and Melchior Sessa. Considering the fame of these Venetian printers34 it seems
that the cat was an allegory to indicate to the reader their basic values of diligence and
speed, as well as a certain propensity to effectively obtain relevant results.
[25] This leads us to deduce that, while the origin of the cat may be Swiss, the mouse
may be Venetian. And in the same way that the popular prints have fed enlightened
stories, the reverse has also happened: popular prints have been the source of
inspiration for printmakers, there is no need to look further than some of Los Caprichos
by Goya. It is believed that the Gat qui menja lo rat (Fig. 7) may also relate to the cat
Picasso made to illustrate Histoire Naturelle, by Georges Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon
(Paris, Martin Fabiani, 1942). The Gat (1936) in Picasso's etching and aquatint is seen
from the same point of view as that of Abadal, with similar fur and expression, but
without the mouse (Fig. 8).35 Here it can be said that Gesner or Topsell were the source,
so we return to the origin.
7 Pere Abadal, Lo gat qui menja lo rat, ca. 1675, woodcut

(author's collection)
33
F. Ascarelli, La tipografia cinquecentina italiana, Florence 1953; G. Zapella, Le marche dei
tipografi e degli editori italiani del Cinquecento, Milan 1986.
34
Silvia Curi, Un tipografo in Venezia "ad signum gatte", Verona 2010.
35
Brigitte Baer, Picasso. Peintre-graveur, Bern 1968, 580; Sebastian Goeppert, Herma Goeppert
and Patrick Cramer, Pablo Picasso. Catalogue raisonné des livres illustrés, Geneva 1983, 104-106.
8 Pablo Picasso, Cat, 1936, etching and aquatint, 36 x 28 cm, in

Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, 1942 (courtesy private collection, Madrid)
[26] But it is more than probable that Picasso knew Lo gat qui menja lo rat from
elsewhere: it should be remembered that he was a regular at Els Quatre Gats (The Four
Cats) café, where the image of the cat was always present: from the café decoration to
all the printed advertising produced by the owner.36 The etching has always been very
popular, particularly in Barcelona, where, until very recently, it was still being printed in a
workshop near the cathedral, in the same area where the cafe still is. Moreover, it is not
the first time that a popular print can be linked to a Picasso. F. Fontbona rightly signalled
this link when he related iconographic fragments of one of the popular prints dedicated to
the Horrores de la guerra, known as the Horrors de Tarragona, to details in the
composition of Guernica and peripheral paintings.37 It should also be remembered that
Picasso was an iconographic phagocyte, observing the accumulation of imaginary and
using it as the fulcrum for his enormous creativity.
The trama of the Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt by Marià Fortuny

[27] The second case I present is related to the work of Marià Fortuny. A small drawing
previously unknown, it is of great interest for its formative value, and demonstrates that
artists pursue careers based on the observation of past masters. Evidently, this generates
an iconographic framework which also reflects the traditional training of artists,
sometimes based on self-study, admiring, analysing and with a critique of past masters,
sometimes conforming to academic canons.
36
See the study on the artistic influence of the Quatre Gats by Marylin McCully, Els Quatre Gats:
Art in Barcelona Around 1900, Princeton 1978.
37
Francesc Fontbona, "La influència del Modernisme en Picasso" (Picasso i l'art espanyol.
Antecedents i conseqüents. Publication of the talks given at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, 25
to 28 April 1990), in: Papers del Minotaure 40 (1998), Barcelona, 123.
[28] Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt (c. 1865) is an ink sketch on white paper
(11 × 11 cm, private collection), a free interpretation of Rembrandt's etching, Self-
portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill,38 from 1639 (Fig. 9 and 10).
9 Rembrandt, Self Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, 1639,

etching, 20.5 x 16.4 cm (reproduced from Christopher White
and Karel G. Boon, Rembrandt's etchings,
Amsterdam 1969, 21)
10 Marià Fortuny, Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt, ca.

1865, drawing, 11 x 11 cm (courtesy Artur Ramon Art,
Barcelona)
[29] It can be considered a free interpretation because, at first glance, it does not look
very much like that of the Dutch master. My identification was based on the copy made
by Attilio Simonetti to send to Baron Davillier, when Davillier was collecting information to
put together the catalogue of echings by Marià Fortuny.39 Simonetti's sketch ─ ink on
38
Christopher White and Karel G. Boon, Rembrandt's etchings. An Illustrated Critical Catalogue,
Amsterdam 1969, 21.
39
Charles Davillier, Fortuny, Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa correspondence, Paris 1875.
tracing paper together with a sketch of the Ydille ─ which is preserved in the Davillier
archives, was published in the valuable catalogue for the exposition in Castres with the
title: Dessin de Attilio Simonetti, d'après une eau-forte de Fortuny (Fig. 11).40
11 Attilio Simonetti, Dessin d'après une eau-forte de Fortuny, ca. 1878,

drawing, 22.7 x 15.6 cm (INHA, Fonds Davillier, Paris, reproduced from
Fortuny. Oeuvres graphiques dans les collections du Musée Goya,
Castres 2008, 21)
[30] Evidently, this identification does not only corroborate the known interest Fortuny
had for the graphic art of Rembrandt, but also relates to one of the unknown engravings
of the master from Reus which Davillier described in his notes, many of which were based
on information from Cecilia de Madrazo and Simonetti. He specifically writes that
Simonetti sent to him, in July 1878: "deux dessins d'un Portrait de Rembrandt (h. 22.7
cm; l. 15.6 cm) à l'eau-forte dont aucune épreuve ne subsiste et rappelle le goût de son
maître et ami pour l'artiste: 'era fanatico di quelle di Tiepolo e Rembrandt'". He notes the
height of the copper, 17 cm, and in ink at the foot of the sketch: "tiré sur une planche où
sont tirées des parties de l'Ydille".41 I cannot be certain of the etching which the master
rejected, but I discovered the preparatory sketch, which coincides completely with the
copy made by his friend Simonetti.
[31] It could be seen as an introductory study of the etchings of the Dutch master.
Degas, carrying out the same study, was registered at the French National Library's
prints division in 1853, where he went to learn from his observations of engravings. The
40
Fortuny 1838-1874. Oeuvres graphiques dans les collections du Musée Goya, exh. cat., Castres
2008, 21, fig. 5.
41
Fortuny 1838-1874, 22.
results can be seen in his first etchings, such as the one he made while he was living in
Italy: Young man, Seated, in a Velvet Beret after Rembrandt (1857) (Fig. 12), similar to
Young man, Seated, in a Velvet Cap (1637) by Rembrandt (Fig. 13).42
12 Degas, Young man, Seated, in a velvet Beret, after Rembrandt,

1857, etching, 11.9 x 9.5 cm (reproduced from Sue Welsh Reed and
Barbara Stern Shapiro, Edgar Degas: The painter as printmaker,
Boston 1985, 21)
13 Rembrandt, Young man in a Velvet Cap, 1637, etching, 9.7 x 8.4

cm (reproduced from Christopher White and Karel G. Boon,
Rembrandt's etchings, 268)
[32] Charles Blanc explained this admiration, at the time very generalised, for the
Dutch master in his catalogue L'oeuvre complète de Rembrandt:
"J'ai en souvent occasion de parcourir l'oeuvre de Rembrandt avec des artistes,

soit en leur faisant les honneurs de ma collection, soit en regardant avec eux les
42
Sue Reed Welsh and Barbara Stern, Edgar Degas: The Painter as Printmaker, Boston 1985, 20-
22.
réserves du Cabinet des Estampes, et je dois dire que le Jeune homme assis et
réfléchissant (Bartsch 286), est une des pièces qui les ont toujours le plus
frappes".43
[33] And, indeed, in his library, Fortuny had a copy of this book.44 Fortuny and Degas
copied and studied Rembrandt, as did many other artists in the second half of the
nineteenth century: Carpeaux, Courbet, Delacroix, Géricault, Manet, etc.,45 as well as
many leading artists before and after them, including Francisco de Goya. Lafuente
Ferrari, curator of the Spanish National Library, wrote the most authentic testimony:
"In a file in the National Library is a print which was in the Cardedera collection, of
little interest, which had written on the back: 'Goya took eight prints of Ramb n
[sic] 21 May'. The note is written on a piece of paper which had been used to line
a cut print of a composition of Teniers, or in his style. This small piece of
documentary evidence, which demonstrates that Goya had his hands on some
Rembrandt prints which are surely in the collection [of the Spanish National
Library] today, gives us the pleasurable sense, today, of the relation between the
two great Old Masters."46
[34] To mention just two great figures as twentieth century examples affirming the
network of graphic patterns, Picasso also repeatedly demonstrated his admiration for
Rembrandt, reinterpreting compositions by the Dutch artist, 47 and Henry Moore evoked
the poetry of his black prints: "Rembrandt's etchings do this for me: it is wonderful how
he makes shadows that have mysterious, unbelievable sonorities […]".48
Conclusion
[35] This article sets out to establish the phenomenology of the notion of the Spanish
word trama as it is associated with the art of printmaking. It identifies, differentiates and
discusses a wide range of settings in which trama is particularly present, focusing on its
importance both in the conception and the activity of printmaking and in the materials
this art employs, including the most important of them all, paper. The article also
considers that trama is appreciable in prints at both the tactile and visual levels, and that
its influence on our visual language, before the advent of photography, is so clearly
recognizable and so insistent that certain contemporary artists have appropriated it in
their metalanguage.
43
Charles Blanc, L'oeuvre complet de Rembrandt, Paris 1861, vol. 2, 227.
44
Carlos G. Navarro, "Testamentaria e inventario de bienes de Mariano Fortuny en Roma," in:
Locvs Amoenus 9 (2007-2008), 319-349, 552.
45
Alison Mcqueen, The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-
century France, Amsterdam 2003.
46
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, Grabados y dibujos de Rembrandt en la Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid
1934, 29.
47
Isadora Rose-De Viejo, Rembrandt en la memoria de Goya y Picasso. Obra gráfica, exh. cat.,
Madrid 1999, 168-181.
48
Henry Moore, Auden Poems/Moore Lithographs, London 1974.
[36] A multifaceted concept that crosses disciplines, trama extends to the graphic
narrative and iconographic series. In original research examining hitherto undocumented
material, the article offers two examples of this in artworks by Catalan and Spanish
artists who are closely associated with a European iconographic tradition. With the first
example, the article demonstrates the influence exerted on fine art printmaking by a
widely used icon in popular European prints, specifically a Catalan print. It describes how
this print can be linked to the trademark of the sixteenth-century Venetian family of
printers, the Sessas, and how it influenced an etching by the twentieth-century painter
Pablo Picasso. In the second example, the article presents and discusses a hitherto
unpublished drawing by Marià Fortuny, the most internationally renowned Catalan painter
of the nineteenth century, and examines how a direct association may be made between
this drawing and a print by Rembrandt. Furthermore, the article offers incontrovertible
evidence to demonstrate, for the first time, that Fortuny is the author of this drawing.
[37] I could certainly give many more examples, especially in the sections dedicated to
narrative and iconography. It should be remembered that, in part, the deductions on the
meaning of the word trama could be applied to arts including painting, silversmithing,
ceramics, stained glass and, equally important, digitally produced works. I'm aware that
this means our trama clearly leaves the door open for new deductions in the future.
Trama is a graphic as well as a linguistic object and what I have aimed to show here is
that, in the sense given to the line by Barthes, trama acquires its most complete
meaning and significance and its richest nuances in the art of etching. Based on these
meanings and nuances, an analytical system can be organised which considers aspects
from the gesture of the etcher in doing the work to how the observer reads the etched
image.

Looking at Patterns and Motifs: Rosa Vives Piqué

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RIHA Journal 0129 | 25 September 2015

Looking at patterns and motifs

Editing and peer review managed by:

Figuratively, as a metaphor of fabric, trama refers to a plot or intrigue, as in the

1 Abraham Bosse, Traicté des manières de graver en taille-

differently-spaced vertical 'wire-marks' and horizontal chain-lines'. Obviously, it is the

From pattern to pixel

Migration and merging of graphic patterns

2 Roy Lichtenstein, Barcelona Head, 1991-92, street sculpture in

Empreinte, exhibition in the Musée Georges Pompidou in Paris, 1997).

Lichtenstein,9 used these symbols in a free interpretation of reproduction of the

3 Francesc Domenec, Fifteen Mysteries and the Virgin of the Rosary,

5 Conrad Gesner, Quadrupedibus vivaparis..., 1551, 354, woodcut

6 Sessa printers' mark, Divina Comedia, 2nd ed., 1578 (from

7 Pere Abadal, Lo gat qui menja lo rat, ca. 1675, woodcut

8 Pablo Picasso, Cat, 1936, etching and aquatint, 36 x 28 cm, in

The trama of the Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt by Marià Fortuny

9 Rembrandt, Self Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, 1639,

10 Marià Fortuny, Portrait of a gentleman after Rembrandt, ca.

11 Attilio Simonetti, Dessin d'après une eau-forte de Fortuny, ca. 1878,

12 Degas, Young man, Seated, in a velvet Beret, after Rembrandt,

13 Rembrandt, Young man in a Velvet Cap, 1637, etching, 9.7 x 8.4

"J'ai en souvent occasion de parcourir l'oeuvre de Rembrandt avec des artistes,

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